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love your neighbor

Be Opened

Be Opened

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

James 2: 1-13

Mark 7: 24-37

“Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The past year the nation has been torn over tension between African Americans who feel they are often unfairly targeted by police officers, and police officers feeling they are being publicly and unfairly punished and scrutinized for a crime that they as a group are not collectively guilty of. The past couple of weeks have seen a number of police officer deaths that in many cases seem to be the result of deliberate targeting, and a lot of officers believe that these killings are the direct result of overheated language on the part of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Houston County Sheriff Ron Hickman, grieved and angry over the senseless shooting of Deputy Darren Goforth, said “Cops lives matter, too.”

There are debates back and forth about the propriety of saying “Black lives matter” versus “Cops’ lives matter,” versus, “All lives matter.” I’m not getting into a language debate. This isn’t about language. This is about human lives. On both sides of the issue. Read More »Be Opened

Love the Vine

Love the Vine, All Loves Excelling
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
May 3, 2015
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Bear Fruit.

That’s a consistent message in the gospel. Jesus says in the Parable of the Sower, “the ones sown on the good soil… hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” The Apostle Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5: 23-24).Read More »Love the Vine